The Year of the Quiet Sun

by Wilson Tucker

  He glanced again at the sky and at the golden fleece about the sun, at the new grass and leaves and then at the aging mound of yellow clay. At length his gaze swung back to the man and woman who waited on him.

  He said: “Thank you for trusting me.”

  Saltus nodded. “They said you could be trusted.”

  Chaney studied Arthur Saltus and almost saw again the unruly sandy hair and the peculiar set to his eyes — the eyes of a man long accustomed to peering against the sun-bright sea. He looked long at Kathryn Saltus but could not see the transparent blouse or the delta pants: on her those garments would be obscene. Those garments belonged to a world long gone. He searched her face for a moment too long, and was falling head over heels when reality brought him up short.

  Harsh reality: she lived here but he belonged back there. It was folly to entertain even dreams about a woman living a hundred years ahead of him. Hurtful reality.

  His conscience hurt when he closed the door because he had no more to say to them. Chaney turned away and went down the steps, putting behind him the quiet sun, the chill world of 2000-plus, the unknown survivors beyond the fence who had fled in terror at sight and sound of him, and the half-familiar survivors within the fence who were sharp reminders of his own loss. His conscience hurt, but he didn’t turn back.

  The time was near sunset on an unknown day.

  It was the longest day of his life.

  SEVENTEEN

  The briefing room was subtly different from that one he’d first entered weeks or years or centuries ago.

  He remembered the military policeman who’d escorted him from the gate and then opened the door for him; he remembered his first glance into the room — his lukewarm reception, his tardy entrance. He’d found Kathryn van Hise critically eyeing him, assessing him, wondering if he would measure up to some task ahead; he’d found Major Moresby and Arthur Saltus playing cards, bored, impatiently awaiting his arrival; he’d found the long steel table positioned under lights in the center of the room — all waiting on him.

  He had given his name and started an apology for his tardiness when the first hurtful sound stopped him, chopped him off in mid-sentence and hammered his ears. He had seen them turn together to watch the clock: sixty-one seconds. All that only a week or two ago — a century or two ago — before the bulky envelopes were opened and a hundred flights of fancy loosed. The long journey from the Florida beach had brought him twice to this room, but this time the lantern poorly illuminated the place.

  Katrina was there.

  The aged woman was sitting in her accustomed chair to one side of the oversized steel table — sitting quietly in the darkness beneath the extinct ceiling lights. As always, her clasped hands rested on the tabletop in repose. Chaney put the lantern on the table between them and the poor light fell on her face.

  Katrina.

  Her eyes were bright and alive, as sharply alert as he remembered them, but time had not been lenient with her. He read lines of pain, of unknown troubles and grief; the lines of a tenacious woman who had endured much, had suffered much, but had never surrendered her courage. The skin was drawn tight over her cheekbones, pulled tight around her mouth and chin and appeared sallow in lantern light. The lustrous, lovely hair was entirely gray. Hard years, unhappy years, lean years.

  Despite all that he knew a familiar spark within him: she was as beautiful in age as in youth. He was pleased to find that loveliness so enduring.

  Chaney pulled out his own chair and slid down, never taking his eye off her. The old woman sat without moving, without speaking, watching him intently and waiting for the first word.

  He thought: she might have been sitting there for centuries while the dust and the darkness grew around her; waiting patiently for him to come forward to the target, waiting for him to explore the station, fulfill his last mission, end the survey, and then come opening doors to find the answers to questions raised above ground. Chaney would not have been too surprised to find her waiting in ancient Jericho if he’d gone back ten thousand years. She would have been there, placidly waiting in some temple or hovel, waiting in a place where he would find her when he began opening doors.

  The dusty briefing room was as chill as the cellar had been, as chill as the air outside, and she was bundled in one of the heavy coats. Her hands were encased in a pair of large mittens intended for a man — and if he bent to look, he would find the oversize boots. She appeared bent over, small in the chair and terribly tired.

  Katrina waited on him.

  Chaney struggled for something to say, something that wouldn’t sound foolish or melodramatic or carry a ring of false heartiness. She would despise him for that. Here again was the struggle of the outer door, and here again he was fearful of losing the struggle. He had left her here in this room only hours ago, left her with that sense of. dry apprehension as he prepared himself for the third — now final — probe into the future. She had been sitting in the same chair in the same attitude of repose.

  Chaney said: “I’m still in love with you, Katrina.”

  He watched her eyes, and thought they were quickly filled with humor and a pleasurable laughter.

  “Thank you, Brian.”

  Her voice had aged as well: it sounded more husky than he remembered and it reflected her weariness.

  “I found patches of wild strawberries at the old barracks, Katrina. When do strawberries ripen in Illinois?”

  There was laughter in her eyes. “In May or June. The summers have been quite cold, but May or June.”

  “Do you know the year? The number?”

  A minute movement of her head. “The power went out many years ago. I’m sorry, Brian, but I have lost the count.”

  “I don’t suppose it really matters — not now, not with what we’ve already learned. I agree with Pindar.”

  She looked her question.

  He said: “Pindar lived about twenty-five hundred years ago but he was wiser than a lot of men alive today. He warned man of peering too far into the future, he warned of not liking what would be found.” An apologetic gesture; a grin. “Bartlett again: my vice. The Commander was always teasing me about my affair with Bartlett.”

  “Arthur waited long to see you. He hoped you would come early, that he might see you again.”

  “I would have liked — Didn’t anyone know?”

  “No.”

  “But why not? That gyroscope was tracking me.”

  “No one knew your arrival date; no one would guess. The gyroscope device could not measure your progress after the power failed here. We knew only the date of failure, when the TDV suddenly stopped transmitting signals to the computer there. You were wholly lost to us, Brian.”

  “Sheeg! Those goddam infallible engineers and their goddam infallible inventions!” He caught himself and was embarrassed at the outburst. “Excuse me, Katrina,” Chaney reached across the table and closed his hands over hers. “I found the Commander’s grave outside — I wish I had been on time. And I had already decided not to tell you about that grave when I went back, when I turned in my report.” He peered at her. “I didn’t tell anyone, did I?”

  “No, you reported nothing.”

  A satisfied nod. “Good for me — I’m still keeping my mouth shut. The Commander made me promise not to tell you about your future marriage, a week or so ago when we returned from the Joliet trials. But you tried to pry the secret out of me, remember?”

  She smiled at his words. “A week or so ago.”

  Chaney mentally kicked himself. “I have this bad habit of putting my foot in my mouth.”

  A little movement of her head to placate him. “But I guessed at your secret, Brian. Between your manner and Arthur’s deportment, I guessed it. You put yourself away from me.”

  “I think you had already made up your mind. The little signs were beginning to show, Katrina.” He had a vivid memory of the victory party the night of their return.

  She said: “I had almost decided at that time, and
I did decide a short while afterward; I did decide when he came back hurt from his survey. He was so helpless, so near death when you and the doctor took him from the vehicle I decided on the spot.” She glanced at his enfolding hands and then raised her eyes. “But I was aware of your own intentions. I knew you would be hurt.”

  He squeezed her fingers with encouragement. “Long ago and far away, Katrina. I’m getting over it.”

  She made no reply, knowing it to be a half-truth.

  “I met the children—” He stopped, aware of the awkwardness. “Children they are not — they’re older than I am! I met Arthur and Kathryn out there but they were afraid of me.”

  Katrina nodded and again her gaze slid away from him to rest on his enveloping hands.

  “Arthur is ten years older than you, I think, but Kathryn should be about the same age. I am sorry I can’t be more precise than that; I am sorry I can’t tell you how long my husband has been dead. We no longer know time here, Brian; we only live from one summer to the next. It is not the happiest existence.” After a while her hands moved inside his, and she glanced up again. “They were afraid of you because they’ve known no other man since the station was overrun, since the military personnel left here and we stayed within the fence for safety. For a year or two we dared not even leave this building.”

  Bitterly: “The people out there were afraid of me, too. They ran away from me.”

  She was quickly astonished, and betrayed alarm.

  “Which people? Where?”

  “The family I found outside the fence — down there by the railroad tracks.”

  “There is no one alive out there.”

  “Katrina, there is — I saw them, called to them, begged them to come back, but they ran away in fear.”

  “How many? Were there many of them?”

  “Three. A family of three: father, mother, and a little boy. I found them walking along the railroad track out there beyond the northwest corner. The little fellow was picking up something — pieces of coal, perhaps — and putting them in a bag his mother carried; they seemed to be making a game of it. They were walking in peace, in contentment until I called to them.”

  Tersely: “Why did you do that? Why did you call attention to yourself?”

  “Because I was lonely! Because I was sick and hurt at sight of an empty world! I yelled out because those people were the only living things I’d found here, other than a frightened rabbit. I wanted their company, I wanted their news! I would have given them everything I owned for only an hour of their time. Katrina, I wanted to know if people were still living in this world.” He stopped and took tighter rein on his emotions. More quietly: “I wanted to talk to them, to ask questions, but they were afraid of me — scared witless, shocked by sight of me. They ran like that frightened rabbit and I never saw them again. I can’t tell you how much that hurt me.”

  She pulled her hands from his and dropped them into her lap.

  “Katrina—”

  She wouldn’t look up at once, but steadfastly kept her gaze on the tabletop. The movement of her hands had left small trails in the dust. He thought the tiny bundle of her seemed more wilted and withdrawn than before: the taut skin on her face appeared to have aged in the last few minutes — or perhaps that age had been claiming her all the while they talked.

  “Katrina, please.”

  After a long while she said: “I am sorry, Brian. I will apologize for my children, and for that family. They dared not trust you, none of them, and the poor family felt they had good reason to fear you.” Her head came up and he felt shock. “Everyone fears you; no one will trust you since the rebellion. I am the only one here who does not fear a black man.”

  He was hurt again, not by her words but because she was crying. It was painful to watch her cry.

  Brian Chaney came into the briefing room a second time. He was carrying another lantern, two plastic cups, and a container of water from the stores. He would have brought along a bottle of whiskey if that had been available, but it was likely that the Commander had long ago consumed the whiskey on his successive birthdays.

  The old woman had wiped her eyes dry.

  Chaney filled both cups and set the first one on the table before her. “Drink up — we’ll drink a toast.”

  “To what, Brian?”

  “To what? Do we need an excuse?” He swung his arm in an expansive gesture which took in the room. “To that damned clock up there: knocking off sixty-one seconds while my ears suffered. To that red telephone: I never used it to call the President and tell him he was a dunce. To us: a demographer from the Indiana Corporation, and a research supervisor from the Bureau of Standards — the last two misfits sitting at the end of the world. We’re out of place and out of time, Katrina: they don’t need demographers and researchers here — they don’t have corporations and bureaus here. Drink to us.”

  “Brian, you are a clown.”

  “Oh, yes.” He sat down and looked at her closely in the lantern light. “Yes, I am that. And I think you are almost smiling again. Please smile for me.”

  Katrina smiled: pale shadow of an old smile.

  Chaney said: “Now that is why I still love you!” He lifted his cup. “To the most beautiful researcher in the world — and you may drink to the most frustrated demographer in the world. Bottoms up!” Chaney emptied the cup, and thought the water tasted flat — stale.

  She nodded over the rim of her cup and sipped.

  Chaney stared at the long table, the darkened lights overhead, the stopped clock, the dead telephones. “I’m supposed to be working — making a survey.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Have to keep Seabrooke happy. I can report a family out there: at least one family alive and living in peace. I suppose there are more — there has to be more. Do you know of anyone else? Anyone at all?”

  Patiently: “There were a few at first, those many years ago; we managed to keep in touch with some survivors by radio before the power failure. Arthur located a small group in Virginia, a military group living underground in an Army command post; and later he contacted a family in Maine. Sometimes we would make brief contact with one or two individuals in the west, in the mountain states, but it was always poor news. Each of them survived for the same reasons: by a series of lucky circumstances, or by their skills and their wits, or because they were unusually well protected as we were. Their numbers were always small and it was always discouraging news.”

  “But some survived. That’s important, Katrina. How long have you been alone on the station?”

  “Since the rebellion, since the Major’s year.”

  Chaney gestured. “That could be—” He peered at her, guessing at her age. “That could be thirty years ago.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “But what happened to the other people here?”

  She said: “Almost all the military personnel were withdrawn at the beginning; they were posted to overseas duty. The few who remained did not survive the attack when the rebels overran the station. A very few civilian technicians stayed with us for a time, but then left to rejoin their families — or search for their families. The laboratory was already empty in Arthur’s year. We had been ordered underground for the duration.”

  “The duration. How long was that?”

  The sharp old eyes studied him. “I would think it is ending just now, Brian. Your description of the family outside the fence suggests it is ending now.”

  Bitterly: “And nobody around but you and me to sign the peace treaty and pose for the cameras. Seabrooke?”

  “Mr. Seabrooke was relieved of his post, dismissed, shortly after the three launches. I believe he returned to the Dakotas. The President had blamed him for the failure of the survey, and he was made the scapegoat.”

  Chaney struck the table with a fist.

  “I said that man was a dunce — just one more in a long line of idiots and dunces inhabiting the White House! Katrina, I don’t understand how this country
has managed to survive with so many incompetent fools at the top.”

  Softly-spoken reminder: “It hasn’t, Brian.”

  He muttered under his breath and glared at the dust on the table. Aloud: “Excuse me.”

  She nodded easily but said nothing.

  A memory prodded him. “What happened to the JCS, to those men who tried to take Camp David?”

  She closed her eyes for a moment, as if to close off the past. Her expression was bitter. “The Joint Chiefs of Staff were executed before a firing squad, a public spectacle. The President had declared a business moratorium on the day of the execution; government offices closed and the children were let out of school, all to witness the spectacle on the networks. He was determined to give the country a warning. It was ghastly, depressing, and I hated him for it.”

  Chaney stared at her. “And I have to go back and tell him what he’s going to do. What a hell of a chore this survey is!” He hurled the drinking cup across the room, unable to stifle the angry impulse. “Katrina, I wish you had never found me on the beach. I wish I had walked away from you, or thrown you into the sea, or kidnapped you and ran away to Israel — anything.”

  She smiled again, perhaps at the memory of the beach. “But that would have accomplished nothing, Brian. The Arab Federation overran Israel and drove the people into the sea. We wouldn’t have escaped anything.”

  He uttered a single word and then had to apologize again, although the woman didn’t understand the epithet. “The Major certainly jumped into the beginning of hell.”

  She corrected him. “The Major jumped into the end of it; the wars had been underway for nearly twenty years and the nation was on the brink of disaster. Major Moresby came forward only in time to witness the end for us, for the United States. After him, the government ceased to be. After twenty years we were wholly exhausted, used up, and could not defend ourselves against anyone.”